I had a question about the time used in Latin prose. I've read how the Romans occasionally used the "historical present" tense in narration, rather than the perfect tense. How often did they use this? Would they have used it for a lengthier narrative composition such as in the genre of a short story or novel, or instead the past perfect?

I have been trying to teach my siblings Latin, but they feel it is boring. :shock:
They refuse to learn, and they have become violent and virtually aggressive with the mention of Latin. :(
I've tried to explain the benefits of Latin, but they give me insults and grief. ...

Thank you so much for all your help with my translation that you all helped with. We are having a coat of arms developed for the entire youth group and are going to be using "Bound by the blood of the cross" on it...thank you so much!

I had a teen that is drawing up the coat of arms for us to send to the actual developer and his grandmother showed him his family's coat ...

I have a quick query regarding some english words that are derived from latin, those that end in cide (homicide, pesticide etc). For example, I know that the stem of the word genocide is derived from genus, but is the cide part derived from a latin word? one meaning 'to kill' perhaps?

I'd heard a good amount about Giordano Bruno and his memory techniques, so I scrounged up an archive of some of his writings in Latin. I started out trying to read his De Umbris Idearum, but even with more than liberal use of the Words dictionary program, I found myself unable to read it, so I decided to attempt to translate it, which means that I have to at least attempt to understand the sentence ...